US weighs in on Turkey-E.U. talks over NATO
By Saul Hudson
Mon Oct 3, 6:21 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States helped rescue Turkey’s bid to join
the EU on Monday in an unusual intervention in European affairs prompted in
part by American concern the bloc was interfering in NATO.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan to prod Washington’s large Muslim ally to accept negotiating terms
with the EU and begin accession talks.
Turkey acquiesced at the eleventh hour after the superpower’s top diplomat
emphasized to Erdogan that the rules for joining the EU could not oblige him
to drop his objection to Cyprus’ membership in NATO, as Ankara had feared.
“Our view is that EU processes shouldn’t affect or be brought into NATO
processes,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
Despite wariness across Europe, the United States has long supported
Ankara’s ambitions to join the EU because Washington hopes anchoring Turkey
in the region’s institutions could encourage more integration between Muslim
states and the West.
But Monday’s high-level intervention also showed U.S. determination to
thwart any EU attempt to use the bloc’s power to exert greater influence
over NATO — a transatlantic alliance traditionally dominated by Washington.
Rice acted in part because close ally Britain, which holds the EU
presidency, needed help to save the talks and in part because Washington
wanted to send a signal that NATO was independent from the bloc, a senior
State Department official said.
Another State Department official said that although Turkey signed up to a
framework for joining the EU that included agreeing not to block Cyprus’ bid
to be a NATO member, European countries did not always follow through on
such pledges.
“We are basically saying (to Turkey): cut whatever deal you can get at the
EU and don’t worry that somehow it ties your hands at NATO — because we
don’t think it does,” said the official, authorized to speak to reporters
anonymously.
CYPRIOT CALL
Rice also called Tassos Papadopoulos, the Greek Cypriot leader of the tiny
divided island, who is involved in a decades-old territorial dispute with
Turkey.
She demanded he refrain from using his government’s ambitions to join NATO
as a wedge between the EU and Turkey, a senior State Department official,
said.
Papadopoulos agreed not to make it an issue, said the official, who asked
not to be named because the conversation was private.
The Bush administration is sensitive to any moves it perceives as an EU
effort to undermine its sway in Europe through its dominance of NATO.
At an EU-U.S. meeting in Brussels this year, Rice did not attend a dinner
after bitter wrangling over wording that Washington insisted on in a
conference statement praising NATO’s role in Iraq, a State Department
official said.